♀Sarah Page

Sarah Page (fl. 1714–1752) was the wife of Zacheus Clough, a millwright who raised their family at Salisbury, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and later lived at Brentwood, in the Province of New Hampshire^W. She bore him eleven children between 1716 and 1740. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Benjamin Clough (born 1740).

Family

Zacheus Clough and Sarah were married at Salisbury on 21 January 1713/14. The town’s printed records give the bride’s surname as Page, but in the county court book from which the entry was printed only part of her surname can be read with confidence, so Page is not certain. Their eleven children were born at Salisbury between August 1716 and May 1740, six daughters and five sons, two or three years apart. Two of the boys died young: the first Benjamin in January 1725/26, aged nine, and the first Zacheus in infancy. Each name was given again to a later son, and the second Benjamin, born on 25 May 1740, was the youngest of the family.

By 1752 the family had moved north across the provincial line to Brentwood. When Zacheus made his will there on 15 December 1752, he left Sarah half of his estate for life, the rest going to their two youngest sons, and named all six of their daughters. He died before 11 August 1757, when the will was proved.

Notes

Her birth is not recorded. Her last child was born twenty-six years after her marriage, so she was most likely born no earlier than the mid-1690s.

A Clough family genealogy published in 1952 calls her a daughter of Joseph Page and gives her death at Brentwood on 19 May 1764; a family chart compiled in 1994 gives the same death. No record of her death has been found, and no Sarah appears among Joseph Page’s children in the printed Salisbury records.